Pages

30/07/2014

Peter Powell. "Hi-ya! It's Thursday, we've got the
music if you've got the time! Here's Top of the Pops, the charts, and The
Dooleys!"

Chart music: The Dooleys: Wanted [3].

Sham 69: Hersham Boys [23]. Trousers off, birds! It's
the Hersham hard men! There are two problems with this song. One, the Hersham
boys are described as wearing corduroys not an item of clothing for alienated
urban youth even in the dark days of 1979. Two, Hersham is a village in Surrey.
Even Jimmy Pursey's determined Mockney dropping of the letter H will never make
'ersham sound like South Central Los Angeles.

28/07/2014

A new documentary film about Adam Ant proves even more
meandering than its subject.

It’s much too late of course for Adam Ant to make a
proper comeback though he retains respect for not treading the well worn path
towards television celebrity contest or nostalgia fuelled package tours. This
film, shot within the past year, follows the former pop star as he navigates
himself back into the music business after an interregnum caused largely by
mental issues. Sadly his confidence in the project is not matched by the
results while the film ill serves its subject.

21/07/2014

Kid Jensen. "Good evening, and a good welcome to all
that's best in the chart in this week's Top of the Pops."

Chart music: The Sex Pistols, C’mon Everybody [3].

The Real Thing: Boogie Down (Get Funky Now) [50].
Lined up prominently behind The Real Thing is a gaggle of uncool musicians.
Could this be the brass section of the Top of the Pops orchestra? It's a
month since the orchestra was last shown accompanying McFadden & Whitehead
on the 14/7/79 edition. Once again they get some good close-ups, hopefully
proving to any watching Musician's Union representatives that Top of the
Pops remains committed to its union agreements.

19/07/2014

The
second in the new sequence of Planet of the Apes films is even better than the
first.

The decision to re-tell the Planet of the Apes saga has
proved to be a strong one. 2011’s Rise of
the Planet of the Apes was impressive enough both in its depiction of the
apes (not that the 60s/70s originals were too shoddy) and the way the narrative
unfolded. This sophomore tale is
different in tone and intent but more satisfying as a complete film. Set a
decade or so after its predecessor it tells the story of how Caesar, the
intelligent chimp raised by a human, fares as leader of the apes now living in
the forest. Those humans who survived the virus have been reduced to squirrelling
a living in wrecked cities and inevitably the two groups will come into
conflict.

Spoiler
warning- if you haven’t seen the film yet this review reveals major plot points

18/07/2014

After a restaurant successfully sued a blogger over a
critical review, is this a sign that influential blogs could soon be forced to
censor their opnions?

Blogs-
like social media- are a platform for anyone to express their views. Obviously
there must be some limitations to this but if you feel strongly enough to
criticise something then chances are it reflects a genuinely bad experience at
the hands of a business of some sort. This week a blogger was successfully sued
by a French restaurant who claimed their business had been adversely affected
by a critical post whose title described the eaterie as ` the place to avoid `
after a poor experience there. A French judge ordered the blogger to alter the
title of the post and pay damages to the restaurant. Could this spur other
enterprises angered by influential blog criticisms to take similar action?

16/07/2014

This is, as they would say in the capital, a nifty little
film. Spoofs are notoriously difficult
to pitch at the right level. Go too deeply into the minutiae of the thing
you’re spoofing and most people won’t get the references, fail to identify
what’s funny about it and it could just look like a poor relative. Rely on
basic slapstick and it will look no different to dozens of others. The Hooligan Factory manages to pitch it
exactly right. Nick Nevern’s film picks at the clichés of the genre, draws out
the inherent silliness of a sub culture that is both childish and dangerous
while the film has a polish that lifts it above what you might expect.

14/07/2014

Between vinyl and CDs there was something else people
listened to music on.

Of all the formats on which music has been delivered
there has surely been none as impractical as the cassette tape. Flourishing comparatively briefly in the
crossover period when people stopped buying vinyl but couldn’t afford CDs,
tapes were the cheap and cheerful answer. For a while they were displayed as
prominently in shops as the other formats. Once people heard a CD though, they
would never go back and now tapes do not even enjoy the revival which vinyl periodically continues to
have.

11/07/2014

Mike Read. "If you've
been following this serial for the last 15 years you'll be keen to know what
happens in the next episode of Top of the Pops."

Chart music: Slick, Space
Bass [16].

Siouxsie
& The Banshees: Playground Twist [33]. It turns out I've
been confusing Siouxsie Sioux
and Lene Lovich for years. Playground Twist is an odd choice for opening song
and starts Top of the Pops with a sound which is more haunting and
gloomy than normal. Adding to the eerie vibe is producer David G. Hiller's
decision to intercut the performance with the cover artwork for the single;
crudely drawn felt tip figures.

09/07/2014

Whether
you like The Stone Roses or not, this 2012 film is about how important music
used to be to teenagers.

Spike
Island is a historical film now, not just because it’s set in
1990, but because it is about something that is dying out. Teenagers and twenty
somethings didn’t just used to like music, they loved it, they embraced it, and
they were inspired by its brilliance. It was as important as football or sex or
having a laugh. In a time when you had to make more of an effort to do
anything, getting to see your favourite band was a key rites of passage moment.
Usually it involved a series of hurdles- getting tickets at all, getting enough
money to buy tickets, getting transport to get to the gig, finding the place to
stand at the gig. Even then there was the drama of what will they play, what
will the opening song be? And the memories of the gig were indelible. Spike Island perfectly catches a moment
that conveys all this excitement.

07/07/2014

Modern
life is not rubbish but it is certainly busy. Whatever people’s circumstances
we seem to spend our time catching up, endlessly chasing our own tail on some
frantic quest for fulfilment. Then it often seems to be the case that people
who find that are not especially happy anyway. The relentless effort of keeping
up seems- oddly enough- to be more difficult now there are more ways of doing
so than in the past. So if we appear to have everything we need should we
actually be happier? Is it wrong to feel bad, should we feel guilty if we do?

03/07/2014

Peter Powell. "Hi everyone! It's the show that counts and we give to you
the chart! It's Top of the Pops!"

Chart music: Sex Pistols, C’mon Everybody [24].

Squeeze: Up The Junction [3]. There's a complicated bit of electronic trickery at
the start of this performance. The camera output is framed on screen and as the
picture zooms in the frame is also enlarged and slowly pushed off the edges of
the picture. The intent is to look like the camera is actually moving through the
electronic frame. It doesn't quite work but it shows how the electronic effects
are getting more and more advanced. It's only just over a year since the
Quantel DPE 5000 digital effects system was first used on Top of the Pops.